Bumbles Day Nursery Leeds

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children, including those with additional needs or in receipt of additional funding, make exceptional progress. This is because of first-class teaching and an inspiring, extensive curriculum. Learning is extended further by visitors to the setting who deliver additional activities, including science experiments and language activities. Outings, such as a trip to an abbey where they draw the ruins, build on children's knowledge of the world. Staff maintained excellent partnerships with parents during the national lockdowns. They set up an online portal to exchange an exemplary range of information and dropped off activity packs for families. Consequently, children continued to excel in their learning.

Children are highly prepared for school. They show excellent independence, motivation and focus while eagerly playing with a wealth of exciting activities and resources. Babies babble with delight while exploring yoghurt, coloured with edible paint. Children aged two play imaginatively with lentils and pans in the outdoor exploratory kitchen. Older children show exemplary behaviour and friendships. They work collaboratively, sharing ideas to create a seaside role play area.

Children form exceptionally strong emotional attachments to staff. During the national lockdowns, staff kept in close contact with children. For example, they uploaded videos reading stories and singing, organised outdoor stay and play sessions and shared photograph booklets. Therefore, children happily returned with the same high levels of confidence.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Inclusion is at the heart of the nursery and is supported by highly successful partnerships with other professionals. Staff diligently monitor children's progress to identify developmental gaps or delay. This informs meticulous action plans and superb early intervention programmes, such as those related to children's early language.
• The highly qualified management team carefully monitors and develops practice through first-class training for staff and extensive self-reflection tools. There is excellent consultation with staff and parents, for example through questionnaires and the parent committee.
• Children love books and stories and have impressive language, literacy and memory skills. Staff reinforce stories through role play, story maps, storyboards and story sacks. They plan community initiatives, such as a book hunt, and parents access the lending library. Children excitedly recall the story about a boy and a beanstalk, which led to them growing herbs for their homemade pizzas.
• Children develop excellent small-muscle strength in readiness for writing. Toddlers use a metal potato masher to make marks with paint. Children aged two retrieve slippery strawberries from the slimy pink custard. They show great focus while threading dried spaghetti through plastic cones. Children in the pre-school room competently operate the wall paint dispensers to fill up their palettes.
• Staff capture children's voices superbly. For example, children in the pre-school room form 'Bumbles Council'. They meet monthly to discuss what they like and want to improve, and talk to the chef about the menus. They initiate projects, such as creating a gardening area, and access the voting station to make fair decisions.
• Staff inspire parents to support children's learning through an exemplary range of information booklets, support packs and home learning resources. During the pandemic, staff adapted parents' evenings, carrying these out through online meeting forums.
• Children have excellent physical skills and awareness of healthy living. They use challenging equipment to create balancing platforms and obstacle courses, and learn about oral hygiene through role play. The nursery chef promotes healthy recipes with parents, and children harvest and cook fruit and vegetables. Children explore real food in home corner role play areas, including those they have previously only seen in a tin, such as pineapple.
• Children develop an excellent awareness of diversity and contribute positively to society. For example, the pre-school children send postcards around the world and liaise online with children from Africa, whom the nursery sponsors. The nursery provides a food bank, and children visit the clothes bank and help with litter picking.
• Staff have wonderfully nurturing relationships with children. Babies smile and gurgle at their loving key person during highly stimulating sensory play. Older babies delight in staff's excellent social interactions as they model making marks in flour with intriguing objects, such as a wooden exfoliating brush. Children confidently do things for themselves because of staff's excellent care routines that promote high levels of independence.